Conventional flood control is done by having a waterway such as bayous, rivers, or streams lead from the area in which it is raining toward the ocean, or in the case of the Houston area, to the Gulf of Mexico. As rain falls, water travels down to the lower parts of the waterway at a speed which is a function of the grade or slope of the waterway and the depth of the water. The more the grade or the difference in height from where the rain is falling to the ocean, the faster the water will flow and when water is deeper, more of the water is away from the wall effects and therefore it will flow faster as more and more rain falls. The waterway will become increasingly fuller until at some point the amount of water which will flow down to the waterway is exceeded by the amount of rain fall, and therefore you have a flood.
The elevation of the seawater the water is flowing to and the elevation of the area in which the rain is falling on are not variable for a specific location. Therefore the conventional methods for increasing the amount of flow is by making the waterway larger, making it straighter so that the water will not be slowed down by making turns, and removing friction causing impediments from the waterway such as trees.
In the case of the Great Flood of 2001 in the City of Houston, the elevation between the flooded area and the Gulf of Mexico was about 24 feet above sea level and the distance from the flooded area to the Gulf Mexico was about 20 miles. So the driving force of the rainwater was a head of about 24 feet. It literally would not do a substantial amount of good to make the waterway significantly deeper because if the waterway were significantly deeper it would potentially be below sea level. To make the waterway progressively wider to increase the volume in a highly urbanized area is a massive investment in the purchase of land and the movement of earth, and the changes to other civil engineering structures such as bridges and roads.
This invention will be primarily discussed in terms of the sites specific application of Houston, Tex. and the flood of 2001. However, it can be applied to a number of other localities such as even flooding on the Mississippi River can be prevented by the methods discussed herein.
Flooding is caused because water is concentrated in an area and is not caused to move out of that area to the sea. That is an obvious statement, but it is a statement well worth considering. If we take one pound of water in the middle of the flood in Houston and desire to deliver it to the Gulf of Mexico at sea level, it will be reduced in height by the amount of the elevation in Houston to the elevation of sea level or about 24 feet. In other words it will give up about 24 foot-pounds of energy in the transportation from Houston to the Gulf of Mexico. Where do the 24-foot pounds go? The 24 foot-pounds of energy goes to frictional losses moving down Buffalo Bayou from Houston to the Gulf of Mexico. A certain amount of the energy is retained in kinetic energy as it has a velocity as it enters the Gulf of Mexico and so some part of the energy is given up due to frictional losses traveling down Buffalo Bayou some of it is kinetic energy which dissipates into the Gulf of Mexico as it arrives at the Gulf of Mexico. Pound for pound this says that each pound of water in the middle of the flood has 24 pound-feet of energy available to drive itself from the flooded area to the Gulf of Mexico. This additionally says that in the flooded situation in the City of Houston with the volume of water to be handled at that time, 24 foot-pounds of energy is not enough to drive the water away fast enough to prevent flooding. We literately have an objective measure that says this is not enough energy, not enough horsepower or however you want to say it, to get the job done.